Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, written in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and its two aircraft, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It follows their development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers in 1960, and later operations. One section is titled "U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK."
“Hill”13 pages
---VECre..-1114 Chapter 3 121 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED facilities available, and the film had to be flown to adding a 10- to 15-hour delay. During the gradual buildup of the crisis, this delay had been tolerated, but, once actual hostilities broke out, US decisionmakers needed a more rapid response. On 29 October, Richard Bissell ordered Lundahl to establish a film-processing facility wo PID employees went to on 13 November to set acility, and two photointerpreters moved from to o help in the effort. Forward processing was, however, ham- pered by the location of the/. frery end of a long supply line. The PID team obtained and outfitted a trailer for film processing, but many problems had to be overcome. The first major problem was obtaining enough clean water. Detachment B personnel, therefore, purchased large amounts of borax locally for use in purifying water. In fact, they bought so much borax on the local market that one of them was arrested 'who believed he was using the chemical to make drugs. It was also difficult to obtain a constant source of developers and fixers for processing the U-2 film, since the large Air Force supply facility at Wheelus AFB in Libya refused to provide the needed photographic chemicals. When PID personnel ac- companied rocessed film from to the United States, they re- turned to sitting atop cahons or chemicals for the next day's processing. At tirst, film was developed in improvised tanks using flimsy wooden spools and hand-turned cranks to move the film through the solutions. Later, the acility moved from its trailer to a building and received more up-to-date processing equipment. As was the case with the photo lab person- nel came from the Agency and the armed forces.'" The need to produce very timely intelligence diminished after the British and French agreed to a cease-fire on 7 November 1956. By the end of the month, foreign troops began evacuating Egyptian terri- tory, and the pressure on photointerpretation unit eased. The facility remained in existence, however, and was used twice in December 1956 and 11 times in the first half of 1957. It was then placed in caretaker status, for emergency use only. (0 12950 1.6(d1111,11110101010111<25Yrs (5) NPIC History. vol. I, pp. 53-54 (S): Lundahl and Brugioni interview (TS Codeword). Se et UNCLASSIFIED
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.